Nathan

Run The Numbers

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Success at your viva is not directly determined by:

  • The number of papers in your bibliography.
  • The number of pages in your thesis.
  • The number of words on all those pages.
  • How many days you showed up to do the work.
  • How many meetings you had with your supervisor.
  • How many times you failed.
  • How often you were challenged.
  • The number of times you overcame significant obstacles to get your thesis done.

Success isn’t directly determined by any of these numbers but your capability and confidence can be helped by simply considering just how much you’ve done to complete your PhD.

Run the numbers. Reflect on how much you’ve done, how far you’ve come and what that all means for you and your viva.

Nathan

Further

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A reflection and summary task for viva prep.

Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three parts and respond with some quick thoughts on each of the following questions:

  • How much further have you advanced knowledge in your field through your PhD research?
  • How would you take your research further if you had the opportunity?
  • How could someone else potentially take your research further?

It’s definitely helpful to remind yourself how far you’ve come on your PhD journey. It’s a valuable exercise to think about how you or others could take things further.

Continuing in research might not be your plan, but it can help your viva prep to explore the context of what you’ve achieved and then think about how it could go further.

Nathan

Manageable Tasks

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Viva prep is manageable. Compared to the massive scale of a PhD it’s a speck of effort.

A candidate might take weeks to get ready, but only in bits and pieces of time.

Half an hour of reading. Ten minutes of looking something up. An hour to bring some notes together.

You can run these sorts of tasks together into longer prep sessions but that’s not an essential part of the process.

Even a mock viva, if you have one, is manageable.

Viva prep is a series of manageable tasks that make the viva itself manageable.

Nathan

Control The Controllables

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This is how an attendee at a recent webinar summarised what I’d said about getting ready for the viva.

Control the controllables.

He was absolutely right. That’s how I think about a lot of things connected with the viva.

There are things you can’t control or won’t know until you get there. These range from questions to feelings to the approach that your examiners will take.

There are things you’ll know but won’t control too: the purpose of the viva, the date or location of your viva venue.

But there’s also a lot you could take control of.

  • You can choose what you wear.
  • You can select the words you use.
  • You can plan out your preparation.
  • You can decide on how you’ll get to your viva.
  • You can choose what you do on the morning.

All of these things and more can help how you feel about your viva.

There are a lot of things you can take control of for yourself in advance of the big day.

If you do that then the things that are beyond your control won’t seem so bad.

 

Many thanks to Luke C for offering this observation!

Nathan

“This Is What I Did”

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It helps to listen to PhD stories and experiences. It can be very useful to hear about how someone prepared for their viva, what they did and how it helped them. Often it can be enlightening to know that someone else had a good viva and the reasons why.

Advice can give options and stories can give directions but you have to take responsibility in applying the relevant points to your own circumstances. If you feel that following someone else’s advice and ideas seems like it is going to be the wrong approach for you then you’re probably right.

Ask for advice. Listen to stories. Apply the best of it all to your situation to help you be ready for your viva.

Nathan

Short Breaks

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A short break when you submit your thesis can help to clear your head and change gears.

A short break during viva prep helps you to take necessary steps to relax.

A short break during the viva can allow you to gather your energy and restore your focus.

A short break at the end of the viva is for your examiners to have a final chat – and for you to wonder what they’re going to say when they call you back in!

 

Short breaks help with lots of stages of the viva process. Perhaps decide in advance what you might do for that final short break so that you’re not simply worrying while you wait.

Nathan

The Bad Vivas

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The opening line to Anna Karenina is often translated in English as:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I think about this a lot when I think about bad vivas.

 

The vast majority of vivas are “fine” – which means some complex combination of fair, challenging, rewarding, enjoyable, tiring, rigorous and a host of other descriptions. Most candidates will be fine at their viva, however challenging the questions or tiring the process.

We can’t pretend bad vivas don’t happen though.

Good vivas are good for similar reasons. They’re attended by candidates who have done the work. They’re facilitated by examiners who have training and have taken the time to get ready. The vivas are conducted according to regulations and expectations.

Bad vivas are bad for wildly different and unique circumstances. A hard PhD journey. A thesis that doesn’t meet expectations. A candidate who hasn’t been appropriately supported. An examiner who doesn’t care. A candidate unwilling or unable to engage with the viva.

Good vivas are good because they follow the overall patterns of the PhD journey done well. Bad vivas (and possible viva failure) result from unique negative circumstances.

Bad vivas happen and we can’t pretend that they don’t. But you also can’t believe – at least not with compelling reason – that you might have a bad viva.

Nathan

Proofreading & Understanding

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A lot of viva prep work is something only you can directly do: annotating your thesis, checking papers and so on.

There are lots of support roles though.

Supervisors can provide mock vivas and perspective; PhD colleagues can listen and ask questions; university staff can signpost resources.

Friends and family can help with two incredibly important jobs: proofreading and understanding.

Before submission, if it’s helpful, see if a member of your friend and family circle can offer a little time to read over your thesis. They’re not looking to grasp your arguments or check your references. They’re trying to spot typos, long sentences, clunky paragraphs and other basic writing things you might not be capable of seeing after so long spent writing.

After submission it will be helpful for your friends and family to listen and understand what you need. They can’t give you a mock viva. They probably can’t ask helpful questions about your research. They may have no way of sharing useful resources with you.

But they can make space, time, peace and quiet for you to prepare.

Proofreading and understanding. Two valuable resources for anyone finishing their PhD.

Nathan

A VIVA For Examiners

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I use VIVA as a little acronym-tool for reflecting on one’s research ahead of the viva:

  • Valuable (to others): what might someone else find useful in your work?
  • Interesting (to you): what do you find fascinating about your work?
  • Vague (or unclear): what do you find difficult to talk about or explain?
  • Ask (your examiners): given the chance, what would you ask your examiners at the viva?

It’s a helpful tool and can be particularly helpful when thinking about the thesis chapter-by-chapter.

I’ve found it useful sometimes to take the VIVA prompts and apply them to other aspects of the viva as well. For example, what if we took the prompts and considered your examiners?

  • Valuable: what might your examiners find useful in your work?
  • Interesting: how can you make connections between your research and their interests?
  • Vague: do you foresee any difficulties in communicating your work to them?
  • Ask: given the chance, what would you ask your examiners at the viva?

OK, OK, the last question didn’t change! But there are still four good reflection on your examiners ahead of your viva!

Nathan

Acutely Nervous

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In the weeks before my viva I didn’t feel nervous.

I was too busy.

I kept myself occupied with reading my thesis a lot, making notes, reading papers, talking to my supervisor and wondering what to do after my PhD was finished. I didn’t have time to be nervous.

Until ten minutes before the start of my viva. I hadn’t slept well the night before and at 9:50am I was tired.

And suddenly I was acutely nervous. One thought occupied my mind: “What if I am just too tired for this? What then?”

Then my examiners arrived, slightly awkward pleasantries ensued and I didn’t have time to think about whether I was tired or not; I was nervous and I had to simply get on with my viva.

 

Viva prep helps someone get ready. It can also be a helpful distraction from feelings one might not want to face.

“I don’t want to think about that.”

Nervousness is commonly a symptom of anticipating something important; it doesn’t mean that the something is negative and it doesn’t mean that nervousness itself is negative. It’s not usually a comfortable feeling, but it doesn’t have to be bad.

Distraction will only help so much though. Viva prep helps, but in parallel you have to build up your confidence for the viva. You have to build up certainty in yourself, your capability and the work you’ve done. Nervousness won’t disappear, but confidence can take the sting out of it.

Don’t distract from nervousness. Pursue confidence.

 

PS: to find out a lot more about viva confidence and getting ready, do come to Viva Survivor, this Thursday 5th December 2024. It’s my live webinar about everything to do with the viva, viva prep, expectations, examiners and more. I’ve shared this session over 375 times and I can’t wait to do it this Thursday as well. If you’re thinking about coming registration closes tomorrow at 5pm. Check out the details now – and maybe I’ll see you there 🙂

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